Critics dig in on coal plant

Opponents fear pollution from proposed facility

May 18, 2003|By Karen Mellen, Tribune staff reporter.

In an attempt to revive Illinois' lagging coal-mining industry, Gov. Rod Blagojevich wants to give $50 million in financial incentives to the builders of a coal-fired power plant on the former Joliet Arsenal, one that would burn Illinois coal and create mining jobs.

But environmentalists have come out against the proposed $1 billion facility, arguing that northern Illinois should not build another coal-burning plant because of the soot and pollution it would create.

They say the technology proposed for the plant--a circulating, fluidized bed system--is not state of the art and releases too much pollution.

"It's not a smart move to have the state subsidizing that kind of technology that's just going to create a future problem for the state of Illinois," said Brian Urbaszewski of the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago.

Indeck Energy Services Inc., based in Buffalo Grove, plans to build the plant to create electricity and sell it on the open market, likely for the industrial park proposed in the former Joliet Arsenal in Elwood. The plant would produce a maximum of 660 megawatts of electricity, which would make it one of the state's larger plants.

To receive financial benefits from the state, the company would burn coal mined in Illinois. The financial incentives include about $25 million in bonds that would be repaid by using sales tax revenue from buying Illinois coal, the governor's office said.

Illinois coal has a high sulfur content, which causes more pollution when burned. Most Illinois power plants do not have the technology to burn Illinois coal and still meet federal air pollution standards, which were toughened in 1990. Those plants import coal with less sulfur, usually from the West.

As a result, the number of coal-mining jobs in Illinois dropped to just over 4,000, down from about 18,000 workers in 1980, said Taylor Pensoneau, president of the Illinois Coal Association.

This project would create about 200 coal-mining jobs in Illinois, according to Blagojevich's office.

"In terms of Illinois coal, everything helps," Pensoneau said. "Two hundred jobs, in this day and age, are a sizable number in the Illinois coal industry."

The plant Indeck proposes turns coal into a sludge in which contaminants can be captured as a gas or solid.

Dave Kolaz, chief of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency's bureau of air, said that a plant using this technology would produce 20 percent of the air pollution that plants built 50 years ago now produce.

Most of those older plants do nothing to stop the emission of sulfur dioxide, which can cause acid rain. Some use scrubbers, a solution of water and limestone, to capture the sulfur.

Representatives from the EPA also said the proposed plant would fall within federal and state guidelines for emissions in the Chicago area.

But Urbaszewski said that the people who would live or work near the power plant would be at a greater risk of health problems. That's because the fine particulate released into the environment from these plants causes respiratory problems.

He cited a Harvard School of Public Health study released in 2001 that concluded that nine coal-fired power plants in northern Illinois are linked yearly to 300 deaths, nearly 14,000 asthma attacks and 2,600 emergency room visits.

"We have unhealthy air right now, in the Chicago area, from two different kinds of pollution: ozone and fine particulates," Urbaszewski said. "About one-third of the fine particulates in the air of Chicago comes from sulfur, from coal-fired power plants."

Other environmentalists said the proposed plant is not the best way to create electricity. Diane Brown, executive director of Illinois Public Interest Research Group, an environmental organization, said the group favors power plants that do not increase air emissions, no matter what the technology.

Shift to cleaner fuel

"But we would prefer that instead of looking at reliance on coal in Illinois, a shift to cleaner energy fuel, such as wind and solar," she said.

Currently, coal is the fuel for about half of the electricity produced in Illinois. Because of this reliance on coal, other environmentalists said that if coal is used, the best technology should be implemented, and that is coal gasification.

This method turns coal into a gas mixture using oxygen or steam, said Ronald Carty, director of the Illinois Clean Coal Institute of Southern Illinois University.

Depending on the cleanup process used, larger amounts of sulfur and mercury are removed, compared to other techniques, he said.

In fact, the EPA agrees that gasification is the best hope for the future of coal-fired plants to limit air pollution.

But EPA Director Renee Cipriano said that the technology has not yet proved reliable enough to be implemented commercially and the costs would be too high. Some estimates are that a gasification system would cost two or three times more.

Other proposals sought

"It's just not feasible at this location," Cipriano said, adding that she would like to see other proposals using the technology.

Jim Thompson, senior vice president of business development for Indeck, would not comment for this story.

Coal industry officials, like environmentalists, advocate high-tech ways to change coal into electricity, such as gasification, because of their belief that cleaner techniques are the key to their future.

"It's a cleaner way to use coal, and it doesn't violate any environmental air-quality standard," Pensoneau said of coal gasification. "Money is usually the bottom line of every issue, at some point. And that's part of the issue here."

A public hearing on the proposed plant will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at Elwood Community Church Hall, 101 N. Chicago St., Elwood.